Lots of thoughts rolling in about the ongoing blackout in Washington DC and what it shows us -- about climate change and weather trends, about resiliency on the individual and social levels, about overhead versus underground electric lines, about public vs private utility companies.

In honor of Independence Day, which along with Thanksgiving Day is America's greatest holiday, I'll roll them out in selected form in the next few dispatches. Here's a start.. A reader sends this sobering info:

Dominion Power in Virginia has a write up on recent studies and costs on the Under vs. Above Ground issue. It can be found here. [JF note: I step in at this point to quote some eye-opening figures from the study.

"In 2005, a study by the Virginia State Corporation Commission found that overhead-to-underground conversion would have 'tremendous costs' that would make 'a comprehensive statewide effort appear to be unreasonable.'

The study, conducted in response to a request from the General Assembly, found the cost of placing existing overhead electric, telephone and cable television lines could approach $94 billion. For electric lines alone, the cost was estimated to be $83.3 billion; the conversion cost per mile was approximately $800,000.

A statewide conversion project would impose an additional yearly financial burden of approximately $3,000 per electric customer, the study warned. 'The costs would be paid ultimately by consumers, either directly or indirectly, in the form of prices, taxes, or utility rates.'

The project would also cause 'significant disruptions' for customers and 'could take decades to complete,' the SCC study warned." Now, back to the reader's note.]

As with every other infrastructure issue facing the country, it comes down to the fact that everyone wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die...

I hope that at some point the country can either come to terms with making the best with what we're willing to pay for, or be willing to pay for how we'd actually like things. Until then, this stuff will continue.

And they've got their own problems, too. From a reader in Seattle:

I remember from our last megastorm (2006), that everyone was asking Puget Sound Energy why they couldn't bury cables underground (like in Europe, some of us added).

The large capital cost is just one reason... But I was struck by the realization that underground isn't a panacea either. The environment is challenging - it's usually wet and contains leached chemicals. Electric current generates heat - duh - and there's nowhere for the heat to go, further stressing the cables. We all notice when a storm knocks out power because it's widespread. Underground failures do happen, just not all at once, and cost more money and disruption to repair.

That's what I remember, but here's PSE's take on it. It's written to make them look good, of course, but FWIW.

Gathering it all up, the capital cost of underground is more, but the O&M long-term is less, as everybody "knows". But the break-even point? If my math is right, taking the averages, order of 5,000+ years.

Plus, they're hard to repair. From a graduate student in the Southeast:

A lot of the lines where I grew up in South Florida are underground. This makes them less likely to suffer wind damage during hurricanes, it's true.

However, in addition to cost, underground power lines suffer from another problem: repair. The conduits carrying these linescan become waterlogged (again, especially in South Florida), and when anunderground line fails at a single point, it is much harder to find that point if the line is buried and can't be easily visually inspected.

What are we revealing about our vulnerabilities? This note started out as a standard "those wimpy Washingtonians get all panicked about the weather," but then took a different turn:

It's funny how the past few days have shown, again, the fragility of the US electrical infrastructure and how, again, DC goes bananas whenever some kind of rain, snow, thunder or wind sweeps through the region. For all the pretensions to global influence and delusions of power, DC apparently will descend into anarchy if the lights and air conditioning don't work for a few days.

For all our military might, global diplomacy, and high tech innovation, we still can't function without electricity. If we're not noticing how vulnerable this makes us, potential adversaries certainly are.

The cost of "self-reliance." From a reader who identifies himself as a small-c conservative, and who lives in the Pepco "service" area:

As Pepco becomes less reliable to provide the service that has been provided for decades, people will have to adjust. People will become a little more self reliant. However, those efforts and costs will divert resources from other areas and keep us from doing things that currently keep us "busy".

Despite the honorable intentions of self reliance, this seems like a step back and will make us less wealthy. The concern I have is this new expectation is just the latest in decades of failing institutions and decline in standard of living. Many point to flat screens on the walls of low income families and health care quality compared to our great-great grandparents as signs of improving quality of life, end of discussion. But that discussion fails to address the things that have been taken away like pensions and now the belief the lights will be on. Our peace of mind is taken away as those sorts of things slip away from us.

Those are the things that make this feel like country is in decline to so many, even as they are talked into their own feelings being irrational by the people pointing at the big TVs...

The challenge for our leaders is to build the institutions that deliver what Americans expect, but are sustainable in today's world, even if it means unwinding what's left of our existing institutions.

Watch out for those generators!

My wife and I live in Bowie MD. We bought a generator 5 years ago and have had several occasions to put it to good use. Our power is still out after 3 days but we've managed to keep our fridge and freezer running. We have found that we can get by with shutting it down overnight as well as for a few hours at a time during the day. It also helps to have a propane grill for cooking and a gas powered water heater...

Our next door neighbor, Bill, got a generator after last summer's power outage. The only trouble was that he only had 5 gallons of gasoline stockpiled (enough for 10 hours) and had trouble finding a working gas station the first day. We had 15 gallons stockpiled and were able to find an open gas station on the second day.

Our friends Janine and Bob had a generator and 35 gallons of gasoline stockpiled. Unfortunately, their generator malfunctioned and caught fire, which set off their stockpile in the shed, which then exploded and set their house on fire. They were able to get out with the clothes on their backs and their vehicles. Their insurance company immediately gave them spending money to tide them over while assessing the damage.

So be prepared but be very careful.

Yes, it is imperial decline. From a veteran of Republican politics:

Northern Virginia was hard-hit as well, and my power was out 72 hours (although like you I am a couple of thousand miles away and conflicted over whether I should trade my comfort for being able to save about $400 of food in fridges and freezers).

It really drives home the fact (and your other correspondents have not emphasized this sufficiently) that the US is becoming in many respects a third world country due to misplaced priorities and a shallow libertarianism. It's not just electricity infrastructure, either. Germany is a country that freezes in winter, but you don't see frost-heaved road pavement. Why? They build the roadbeds much deeper. American contractors seem to prefer pie crust roads.

Adjusted for inflation, the US has spent well over $20 trillion on the military since the cold war began. Does anyone think if we had only spent $15 trillion we would be speaking Russian? What about the $1 trillion we squandered on Iraq? Could a portion of that have gone for improved electricity grids, better water filtration (with backup generators - the fact that some water filtration plants can't pump water when the grid goes down is scandalous), better roads, and better infrastructure in general?

We can incarcerate more people than any other country, and we can assassinate people half way around the world with drones, but we can't keep the lights on in the imperial capital. Pathetic.

About the Author

James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book is China Airborne.

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And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.

— Deuteronomy 15: 12–15

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.

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During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

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Most of the big names in futurism are men. What does that mean for the direction we’re all headed?

In the future, everyone’s going to have a robot assistant. That’s the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. They’re calling it Moneypenny—the secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bond’s womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

Members of Colombia's younger generation say they “will not torture for tradition.”

MEDELLÍN, Colombia—On a scorching Saturday in February, hundreds of young men and women in Medellín stripped down to their swimsuit bottoms, slathered themselves in black and red paint, and sprawled out on the hot cement in Los Deseos Park in the north of the city. From my vantage point on the roof of a nearby building, the crowd of seminude protesters formed the shape of a bleeding bull—a vivid statement against the centuries-old culture of bullfighting in Colombia.

It wasn’t long ago that Colombia was among the world’s most important countries for bullfighting, due to the quality of its bulls and its large number of matadors. In his 1989 book Colombia: Tierra de Toros (“Colombia: Land of Bulls”), Alberto Lopera chronicled the maturation of the sport that Spanish conquistadors had introduced to South America in the 16th century, from its days as an unorganized brouhaha of bulls and booze in colonial plazas to a more traditional Spanish-style spectacle whose fans filled bullfighting rings across the country.

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

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The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

An attack on an American-funded military group epitomizes the Obama Administration’s logistical and strategic failures in the war-torn country.

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.

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What is the Islamic State?

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